An Artistic Fiesta: Life Served in a Dish
‘Prodigal,’ by artist Leila Malallah. Courtesy of the artist.
Man has always wondered about the meaning of life, and his search may, at times, have directed him to a treat that brightened his eyes and comforted his soul. A banquet that compresses life’s delights into ideas, music and philosophy, each of which retains its own pleasure and the necessary intellectual tools it provides to refine the identity upon which man leans on as an intellectual cane.
Only the artist can direct his audience to the proper soulful feast, and the philosophy behind his art is the one that supports his viewers with the metaphorical cane. To sip on a limitless humane pond of artist experiences, a dwelling for his ever-present questions; ones that would shake his soul and cast the lights of creativity on his heart and mind so that the artist would produce a pure work of art that mirrors his reality and transcends it a bit farther.
The passion which man holds for nature has long since been self-evident. You can see him reflect on God’s blessings, and come up with ways to make the most of them to face turbulent days and swift changes. Wherein the Arab man has nil but his loving and ever-giving mother, the palm tree. He feeds on its fruits throughout the year, and as soon as he raises his hand asking for more, it spoils him with its generosity.
“Saluk” is a popular traditional dish in the east of Arabia. Palm dates are picked before they ripen and in this stage the date fruit is locally known as “Bisr,” to be washed and cleansed thoroughly of dust and then boiled in water for roughly forty minutes until cracks in the skin appear to indicate that it is well-done.
Dates are then taken out and left to dry on mats under sunlight for up to two weeks. As for the commonly used types of dates, they are “Zamily” and “Shabibi.”
Leila Malallah
Leila Malallah is an artist who was born into an Arab, Saudi and Qatifi environment, all of which have shaped her identity and character, but she always sought to understand the world around her and provide her own answers for the big questions, namely the meaning of life. Leila turns to various types of art to produce disrupting pieces that pat her soul in a gentle yet unnerving manner.
When asked about the limitations of art, the artist says that artists have been given a cognitive intuition that implores them to express themselves, interpret the world around them and share their imperfect view of it with their audience. They resort to mirror reality in a template that sends different messages, touch the recipient on the other end and affect them deeply. The freer the artist felt, the more he occupied his space with his own pressing questions and explored them wholeheartedly, thus urging people to reflect on their own problems and those of life; and in this tight corner lie the fickle thing that is the philosophy of art.
To Leila, freedom is the space in which the artists’ work grow apart from themselves, so that others can come up with their own answers based on their experiences. If this was not the case, then art would be crippled with restrictions that would suffocate it.
Leila Malallah, 2011
Life thrives on metaphors and art thrives on its interpretations. The meaning creates a space for which the artist can take as their own workshop. Those meanings are not limited to the experience of the artist but expand beyond themselves, and are liberated when questioned and put to the test, bringing different perspectives together, and serving as a bridge of communication and a language that is understood by all. Leila says that one’s relationship to art is not restricted to the aesthetic, but is a relationship that offers avenues of dialogue for self-reflection.
In the past, “Saluk” was a dessert in which the father would bring the stalk to the mother after picking it from the palm tree, so that she would prepare Saluk for her children, and then they would enjoy it as sweets. Families lavishly enjoy the warmth of our ever-giving mother the palm tree, and her abundant gifts. Yet like all things which we grow to upgrade and replace, “Saluk” is about to disappear from modern culture, but art evokes it into life with a sweet tug just like a child’s grip on his mother’s hand.
The Still Life art school encompasses the aesthetic elements of foods and objects, using them as mediums for deeper messages. This school adapts inanimate objects as a vacuum to which the artist can incorporate their own pressing questions and tamper with the artwork in a method that serves their style. The artists take simple things and show them in a different light so that we see in them what we usually do not see.
Leila infused the soul artistically into her depiction of “Saluk,” expressing feelings of nostalgia and dis-belonging, in a narrative to remind the Arab audience about the meaning of food saying that food always compiles the richness of history, and despite our biological need for it, it is much more than that. It is a metaphor that brings cultures together, and artists have long since used it as a medium between the familiarity of material reality and the symbolism of the metaphor.
All artistic metaphors have us return to our beds loaded with fresh perspectives and interpretations that we dive into to know ourselves better. We inspect art with the eye of confronting life and its oddities that rack up day after day, just like gunk that piles up in the corner of our eye as we sleep. Art focuses on the simplest details of our environment, helping us touch on our feeling of dis-belonging and see the reflection of our experiences going beyond ourselves and reaching others.
Join us as we go through some of Leila’s striking artworks and inspect their beautiful details.
The Silent Affinity
The Alienation of Blueberries
